Articles

65 Items

Gate of Tianjin Free-Trade Zone. A brightly lit arch over a nighttime roadway. A brightly lit pillar appears in the background.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Collective Resilience: Deterring China’s Weaponization of Economic Interdependence

    Author:
  • Victor Cha
| Summer 2023

China leverages its market in a form of “predatory liberalism” that weaponizes the networks of interdependence created by globalization. ne response to China’s bullying would be for its targets to form an alliance to retaliate against China’s high-dependence trade should Beijing act against any alliance members. 

Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with the State Council Presidium

Ramil Sitdikov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Journal Article - Washington Quarterly

Lessons in Sanctions-Proofing from Russia

| 2023

Overall, "sanctions-proofing" activities by governments do not offer an impermeable shield against financial sanctions due to the strength of the US dollar, the reach of multilateral sanctions, and the speed with which coordinated sanctions can be imposed. However, some sanctions-proofing strategies enable governments to continue pursuing their goals despite sanctions pressure. Analysis of Russia's adaptations to the sanctions should temper expectations of sanctions' ability to alter wartime behavior. The threat of sanctions did not deter war and the initial imposition of sanctions did not coerce a change in the decision to wage war.

Dancers celebrate DPRK–China friendship at the Arirang Mass Games in 2010

Roman Harak via Wikimedia Commons

Magazine Article - Harvard Kennedy School

Easing U.S. Sanctions on North Korea Could Benefit Both Sides, HKS Korea Expert Tells Lawmakers

| May 17, 2022

Appearing at a hearing May 12 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation, Park discussed U.S policy towards North Korea and described the challenges of using sanctions as a deterrent for North Korea’s nuclear saber rattling. Specifically, Park pointed to China’s deepening economic engagement with North Korea as one reason why western sanctions have largely failed to change Pyongyang’s behavior. “By free-riding off of China’s financial and domestic marketplace systems, North Korea can conduct vital commercial transactions beyond the reach of American sanctions,” Park said.

an alert from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

AP/Jon Elswick

Journal Article - Foreign Affairs

The End of Cyber-Anarchy?

| January/February 2022

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video call with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Shoigu reported to Putin that the Defense Ministry plans to complete clinical tests of a coronavirus vaccine next month. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

AP Photo/Alexei Druzhinin

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy

    Author:
  • Michael McFaul
| Fall 2020

Why did Russia’s relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Tracing the causal influence of domestic determinants—individuals (President Vladimir Putin), ideas (Putinism), and institutions (autocracy)—reveals Putin’s significant influence in the making of Russian foreign policy.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (from left) greet South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem at Washington National Airport

DoD/Department of the Air Force

Journal Article - Small Wars Journal

Bernard Fall as an Andrew Marshall Avant la Lettre (Part II)

| Dec. 09, 2019

SWJ interview with Nathaniel L. Moir, Ph.D., an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Moir is completing a book manuscript on Bernard Fall for publication.

Uncovering the Domestic Factor in the Sino-Russian Energy Partnership

World Bank Photo Collection/Flikr

Journal Article - Geopolitics

Uncovering the Domestic Factor in the Sino-Russian Energy Partnership

| Oct. 15, 2018

The article outlines the role of national narratives in driving both Russia and China’s energy foreign policy and goes on to argue that the Sino-Russian gas breakthrough in 2014 was due to the peculiar way in which domestic factors paired with international circumstances to produce the outcome at that particular moment.

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Journal Article - Middle East Institute

Sovereign Wealth Funds in Small Open Economies

| Apr. 24, 2018

The small open economies of the Gulf and Southeast Asia are pioneers in the establishment of

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). The SWFs of countries like Qatar and Singapore are among the

world’s largest in terms of total asset size relative to Gross Domestic Product. This article looks

at the different compulsions behind the setting up of SWFs by small open economies.